radio-mic use in amateur theatre and schools
Tue, 17 Oct 2006, 10:16 pmDavid Ashton14 posts in thread
radio-mic use in amateur theatre and schools
Tue, 17 Oct 2006, 10:16 pmI frequently deliver a load of radio mics to a theatre group or school and the director is relieved that all his[her] problems are over.We just clip on the mics and the weakest voice will come thundering out, in tune, over the band next to the stage.Oh dear.Radio mics are complex devices,mine have 700 channels but that does not mean you can use anything like that number because they interact with each other and other radio sources in unpredictable ways, so you have to select the dozen or so frequencies that will work in the venue and set these on the transmitters and receivers.Each transmitter also has a gain control which needs to be set correctly.You then have to plug in the actual lavalier mic into the transmitter and fit it to the actor in such a way that they don't rip it out during the dance routine.Then you can fit fully charged batteries and you can start to plug them into the P.A.Now working a 16 channel mixer is difficult at the best of times but with actors entering and exiting the stage at rapid intervals keeping track of which channels need to be live and more importantly which ones need to be off can be a nightmare even more so if actors are changing mics to save hiring more.Just to make life more interesting the omni-directional mics usually used on beltpacks will pick up all the sound in their location, so a weak voice next to a band will only be amplified relative to the band.So who's your sound operator? well Fred missed out on a part in this show so we thought he could do it.Oh dear.I know I'll be out every night, the problems will be ,mic ripped out,flat battery,lost antenna,channel changed on belt pack,etc.Now you are wondering why this rant.The point is please don't use radio mics unless you absolutely have to,a good voice teacher would probably be better value.If you really must use them prepare to spend a lot of time getting them right and rehearse with them a lot.Finally your sound operator must be good and keen and will probably need an assistant to keep tabs on which mics are 'live'.Finally be prepared for something to go wrong, you are using a highly complex system and the scope for things stuffing up is significant, always have a spare.Sorry to be so complex but it was hard to explain any other way.
You're right about the
Wed, 13 Dec 2006, 07:51 pmWalter Plinge
You're right about the shy/projection problem. We had a flute player that wanted to perform but was petrified of a mic. unfortunatley we had to mic her because the sound crew actually couldnt hear her from the back of the hall. We kept turning the foldbacks down to encourage her to play with her own volume and only mic her a bit...and to stop scaring her with her volume. We discovered that if we quietly played background noise over the foldbacks that she would try to project over it, so thats what we did in the performance, amplified the audience to her